Network-attached storage (NAS) consolidation is the process of reducing the amount of NAS systems used in an environment to a unified system that behaves like a virtual system. NAS consolidation gives you the ability to provide a cloud-like experience to users while eliminating a lot of limitations that single NAS systems have. To learn more about NAS Consolidation and its benefits, have a look at our Storage Explained article about NAS Consolidation.
Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Consolidate your NAS
- Instant automatic provisioning. Users have become accustomed to instant gratification now thanks to the cloud. A storage system that supports File System as a Service gives your users the same experience as the cloud with instant automatic provisioning.
- Better resource utilization. Sharing the hardware resources between all users greatly increases resource utilization by not wasting tons of free disk space spread out across many NAS filers or offering better performance for peak usage to individual groups.
- Time efficiency. You’ll spend much less time managing storage. Managing a single storage system instead of many independent islands will save you time.
- Reduced cost. Economies of scale means that you can drive down your storage cost when using a single large storage system, e.g., with high-density servers or with better discounts when you buy more storage servers.
- Improved security. Managing access control, enforcing permissions, ensuring proper encryption are just a few examples of security tasks that are easier to manage and audit on a single storage system.
Quobyte Features for Successful NAS Consolidation
Quobyte is a software-only distributed file system that offers a range of features to build a highly scalable, performant, and secured File System as a Service. The API-first approach and built-in self-management make Quobyte the ideal choice for NAS consolidation.
Multi-Tenancy with Self Service
Quobyte’s Multi-Tenancy allows you to fully isolate your groups or departments, even down to the hardware level. Each tenant gets their own “virtual filer” that they can manage themselves. The Quobyte Webconsole lets tenant admins manage their resources such as volumes, quotas, or clients.
As the storage admin, you can control everything behind the scenes, like where tenant data gets stored, what media type they are allowed to use, or if data is encrypted.
API First
Everything in Quobyte can be done through the API, from storage provisioning to maintenance tasks such as updates or data migrations. You can easily automate storage provisioning and give your users a cloud-like experience.
Thin-Provisioning and Oversubscription
Volumes in Quobyte are thinly provisioned, meaning that they don’t take up any space when you create them. All volumes on a Quobyte cluster share the free available space (and performance), allowing admins to reduce idle resources and benefit from oversubscription.
Policy-based Data Management
Administrators control all aspects of a Quobyte cluster through policies, e.g., on which storage media files are stored, when they are tiered or recoded, and whether data is encrypted. These policies are configurable down to the file level. With a few clicks, admins can configure that data for tenant A is always stored on flash, while for tenant B, all data must be encrypted.
Non-disruptive Operations
Adding or removing drives or servers, rebalancing or moving data, software updates: All of this can be done without any interruption to your users and applications. You can provide 24/7 uptime even while doing maintenance tasks during regular working hours.
Security Built-in
From X.509 certificates for access to end-to-end data encryption and TLS support, Quobyte brings all the features for secure multi-tenancy, even for applications that deal with sensitive data.
Deploy Anywhere
Quobyte runs on any x86 server and the public clouds. Give your users the same scalable file system services, regardless of where their environment runs.
If you are still using conventional storage solutions, such as several NAS systems, you might be missing out on the great benefits that consolidating your NAS with Quobyte could offer you. It’s time to reduce your storage cost and start taking advantage of all the features a real File system as a Service provides. Contact us today and get started with the Quobyte Infrastructure Edition
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Originally posted on Quobyte’s blog on October 3, 2021.
